Highlighters and Labels and Post-Its, Oh My!
By Andrea Nostramo
Has this ever happened to you? You're right smack in the middle of that important term paper. The one you
know you'll do great on, because you've got an awesome arsenal of points, as well as fabulous portions of
text to back up those points, and you know that somewhere in your big Psychology textbook which is like
900 pages long, there is this one quote that will totally rock your paper, a quote you just saw
yesterday, and now, you sit, thumbing through pages and pages of things you vaguely remember reading, and you peruse
through your memories asking yourself was it on the right side or the left? - looking for that one line that will
complete your paper - and you just...can't...find it. It's happened to me PLENTY of times and I hate it more
than anything. It's a huge time-waster and turns what could potentially be a fun learning process into a tedious
snooze-fest, especially when it happens a bunch of times per paper. Eventually, you either find it and shout hurray!
-which is great but you've just wasted valuable time - or you can't find it and wind up settling for something not
as good, and so your paper (and perhaps vicariously your grade) suffers.
This conundrum has happened to me more
times than I can count. Why? Because I overestimate my ability to memorize page numbers, chunks of text, and when
I need for which sentence to go with which paragraph. Students often take several classes at once, and term papers and
finals often wind up occurring around the same time, so relying on your brain to recall which page one single sentence was
on in a giant textbook is a bad idea. So what's the solution? It's simple.
Highlighters and
Post-It Notes. They're the little sunshine colored rainbows of hope in a vast world full of forgetfulness.
Trust me. There is nothing more lifesaving than thumbing through a large text full of tiny dark print to look for one
particular quotation, and then seeing that hint of yellow shine out through all the black. Highlighters are great.
You can use a different color for different subjects to lessen your confusion even further, and you can go to any store that
sells school supplies and get little sticky tabs to attach to the end of the pages so you'll be able to know which page
has that one certain excerpt you're looking for, kind of like the alphabetical tabs in an address book. Another
good thing about highlighters? They're inexpensive, and they're sold just about anywhere you can buy school
supplies.
Highlighters aren't the only helpful inexpensive study aid on the market. Remember the post-it
note? That little yellow sticky square that your mother sticks to the bathroom mirror to remind you - again - to put
the cap back on the toothpaste? Those little sticky devils can bring immaculate back to a messy notebook, or fill you
in on that boring book whose plot you keep forgetting.
My first semester as a graduate student I had to
read Middlemarch by George Eliot, a thick meaty book with tiny little print. As an English major, I was also
reading countless other books for countless other classes and yet it was Middlemarch whose characters and plot I
just couldn't remember. I'd read six chapters in one night, and by the next morning the information would have
just sailed out of my head like a soft breeze escaping out of an open window. What saved me? Post-it notes.
If, like me, you like to sell your textbooks back at the end of a semester, you're likely to get more money if you don't
write directly in the book, so post-it notes come in handy. Stick a note on page 54 to remind yourself that the meter
Shakespeare writes in is called iambic pentameter, then seem like a whiz in class the next day when your teacher
or professor asks a tough question and all your classmates go flipping through their textbooks but you have the answer right
on hand.
At the end of the day, you still need to pay attention in class, stay awake, study hard, and all that
other good stuff...but it is always nice to have some tools to lend a helping hand.
FYI: On a recent
episode of Oprah, which aired on Tuesday, January 15th, Oprah had on David Windorski, who has created a new post-it
/ flag / highlighter hybrid called, rather accurately, the "post-it flag highlighters." A highlighter with
a built in "flag" for easy labeling, this modern device is going to be the newest cool gadget in responsible studying.
To find out more about it and Mr. Windorski's visit to Oprah's studio, read the article here at Oprah's website:
http://www.oprah.com/tows/slide/200801/20080115/slide_20080115_350_113.jhtml
